There is so much fanfare the way Environment Secretary Angelo Reyes launches his project called Green Philippine Highways which aims to plant 516,000 trees from Ilocos region to Mindanao regions.

        The project trumpets its end result as to clean the air with pollutants emitted by motor vehicles along the highway which according to records have reached five million registered all over the country.

        It is said that 10 trees could gobble up the emission of one car, thus, the target number of trees to be planted along the highway, if ever these would grow, could absorb the emission of at least 51,600 motor vehicles---a number that may not make difference at all because 31 percent of these registered vehicles are actually in Metro Manila.

        Aside from the vehicular emission which is 70 percent of pollutants in the air we breath, the Filipinos have still to contend with fuel burning of fixed facilities that comprised 30 percent.

        Globally, the state of environment of planet earth was described by a Time Magazine article on April 3, 2006 as at “a point beyond which our planet is no longer able to repair and regenerate itself.”

        Among the eight-member Association of Southeast Asian Nation, the Philippines is considered to have the second most polluted air, after Indonesia.

        With the bleak environmental situation that threatens the whole human race and the state of environmental degradation the country faces, the Green Philippine Highways was introduced by Reyes, as if planting trees in the highways is an effective way of reversing the worsening air pollution.

        On August 25, the day the simultaneous tree planting would take place in which President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is to lead, one could expect more fanfare and speeches that would laud Reyes’ project.